China’s outgoing premier, Wen Jiabao, said a few things the national legislature needed to hear in his final speech. But he was silent on other matters equally important.

“Social strains are clearly increasing,” he warned in the opening session of the National People’s Congress, a clear reference to a growing gap in incomes between the rich and the poor. The country must “take expanding domestic demand as our long-term strategy for economic development,” a reminder that dependence on exports has begun to hurt prosperity instead of helping it.

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